News

Beach volleyball
02/10/2018

Basta and Kolaric hope to lead way for other Serbian teams

Qinzhou, China, October 2, 2018 – Serbian duo Stefan Basta and Lazar Kolaric stepped into the spotlight with strong performances in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour that led to two silver medal finishes at the Lucerne and Tokyo 3-star events.

Basta believes that these two successes will help pave the way for other teams to get more involved in beach volleyball.

“We are trying to give an opportunity for the new Serbian teams to be on the World Tour and we are pushing them to playing more in international tournaments,” Basta said. “Maybe we are the first Serbian team at this moment, but hopefully there will be more teams in the next few years.”

The Serbian pair’s accomplishments in the World Tour, however, are not akin to the achievements of their men's and women's volleyball programmes – at least not for now according to Kolaric.

“As a beach volleyball player, it’s hard to follow the success of the men’s and women’s volleyball teams. That discipline has a huge following in Serbia, but beach volleyball is growing in the country each year and I am sure that in the future we will have a lot to present in the World Tour and in the Olympics.

For now, the main focus of the pair is to get back on the winning track after a three-set loss on the first day of the main draw. They did that with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-17) win over Turkey’s Murat Giginoglu and Volkan Gogtepe in Round 1.

“It will be great to get the gold medal but we will do it match by match and step by step,” Basta said. “We really have to prepare ourselves for the next match.”

“We’ve got a tough draw in Round 1 but we managed to win,” Kolaric added. “We were more precise in crucial moments. We are happy for that and we are eager to get to the next round.”